AAP suspends Punjab MPs Dharamvira Gandhi, Harinder Khalsa

New Delhi: The AAP on Saturday suspended party MPs Dharamavira Gandhi and Harinder Singh Khalsa from primary membership of the party and initiated disciplinary proceedings against them. The Aam Aadmi Party’s Political Affairs Committee (PAC) suspended the MPs and referred disciplinary proceedings against them to the National Disciplinary Action Committee, said party spokesperson Deepak Bajpai. Gandhi is MP from Punjab’s Patiala constituency whereas Khalsa represents Fatehgarh Sahib constituency in the state.

www.hindustantimes.com

“In its meeting on Saturday, the PAC took cognizance of anti-party activities indulged in by Gandhi and Khalsa in Punjab. In a unanimous decision, the PAC suspended Khalsa and Gandhi from the party and referred their cases to the National Disciplinary Action Committee,” Bajpai said adding that all PAC members except Kumar Vishwas were present in the meeting. “Now the three-member NDAC, with Pankaj Gupta, Dilip Pandey and me as its members, will look into the complaints of indiscipline and anti-party activities against Gandhi and Khalsa,” he added. Bajpai charged Gandhi and Khalsa with involvement “in the activities of certain outfits, opposed to aims and objectives of the party”. “The only aim of these outfits is to damage the party and anti-corruption movement in the country,” he said, adding that there are several instances that show that Gandhi and Khalsa were trying to establish a parallel organization with the sole objective of damaging the party in Punjab.

Chicago: The Aam Aadmi Party Convener and Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal has launched a door to door campaign seeking donations for the AAP. According to former overseas co-coordinator of Aam Aadmi Party, Dr. Munish Raizada, this is nothing more than a misleading campaign!

Raizada says that Kejriwal has no moral right to seek donations from common man as he has dismantled financial transparency in AAP by removing donors list from its website. Displaying donors’ list showing real time donations and making the income and expenditure accounts available online were the basis and the promise of the AAP, emphasised Raizada.

Now, after hiding donors’ list and its balance sheets from the public, the AAP cannot claim to be practising alternative politics.

Lack of financial transparency in the Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP prompted a group of NRIs, who once worked to mobilise funds and support for the party, to turn against it. (File photo)

It may be noted that AAP removed the list of donors from its website in June 2016. Moreover, since then AAP has been surrounded with controversies related to donations. AAP had also received Rs 30.67 crore Income Tax notice, last year in November, implying that all is not well with AAP’s accounts, says Raizada.

He further questions Kejriwal, that if AAP has nothing to hide about its accounts and if AAP is honest with its account keeping then why is Kejriwal hiding the donations?

Even the donation policy that was earlier the pride of every AAP volunteer has been done away with. The donation policy on AAP website used to state: “Every single rupee donated to the party will be published on the website immediately along with the details of the donor. Every expense done by the party will also be published on the website.”

But rather than putting the donors’ list in public domain, the party’s corrupt leadership started blaming BJP and I.T. Department for harassing its donors.

Opaque political funding is the fountain head of corruption. Further, Raizada says that if the party cannot be transparent in its political funding, then talking about fighting corruption and graft is a mere rhetoric. He said that the appeals by Chanda Bandh Satyagraha have fallen on deaf ears as far as the party’s

leadership is concerned.

Chanda Bandh Satyagraha makes an appeal that AAP should immediately restore donors’ list on its website and then only seek new donations. Chanda Bandh Satyagraha was started by AAP’s volunteers in 2016, with an appeal to the public not to donate to AAP unless it makes its donation lists open and transparent.